Month: January 2017

Letters… and not the alphabet ones either!

Sibo gets a letter

When last did you get a letter? A real letter! Not a window envelope from the bank or an bill that needs to be paid.

Unless you received some Christmas cards in the post, I bet you can’t even begin to remember.

The art of letter writing has gotten lost in this modern day society. Very few people write letters these days. Email is so much quicker and easier. More environmentally friendly too I suppose.

Kids don’t even write notes to each other and pass them under the desk anymore because they rather WhatsApp each other or use some other form of social media.

People would get love letters. They were things that you could read and re-read even when they got so crumpled that you could hardly read the writing anymore and the paper was falling to pieces. My gran still has letters that my grandpa wrote her a million years ago.

Of course, once you write something you can’t take it back. No matter how badly you want to. Although that still applies today – if you write a message on your cell phone or on some other social medial – you cannot take it back. Sure, you can delete things, but once you have read something – you cannot un-read it… so be nice with your words people!

Most people claim that the Post Office does not work very well anymore – but honestly – that isn’t exactly true. They do actually get pieces of post from A to B. My friend Ginny uses the Post Office all the time. Last year she posted her mum a birthday card – from Pretoria to Cape Town – regular mail. It was a really fancy one that she had specially made and was quite thick. She wondered if maybe somebody might think there was something interesting inside the envelope and if it would reach its destination or not.

But guess what. It did. Just a few days after she posted it too!

Sometimes it is a bit frustrating to stand in line at the Post Office to buy stamps (and then find that they don’t have any) but they will always be able to put a sticker with the right amount on your envelope if you have the letter with you.

Go on people – write a letter to somebody. I can guarantee that you will make their day!

Sibo

Breakfast is Important

Hope you all have survived the first week of school.

I was so tired the second morning that I almost did not make it to breakfast. Sadly my mum nagged me so much that I did not have a choice.

Sibo! She said. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!

Whaaatttt?  I am not even hungry yet at breakfast time. I have done nothing but sleep all night.

You’ve been fasting all night, she said. That’s where the name comes from – “Break Fast”. You must eat to have energy to manage for the rest of the day.

I yawned and staggered off to the breakfast table.

Okay – I’ll just have a piece of toast.

No ways – she smiled at me. You will have cereal, egg on toast and a piece of fruit!

I glared at her and she wagged her finger at me. No attitude from you missy! Eat your food.

Research shows that you can remember things better when you eat a decent breakfast. This is because the food restores glucose levels, an essential carbohydrate that is needed for our brains to function. I suppose that this is important so that we can remember what we learn at school.

Also – they say that if you eat breakfast as your biggest meal of the day – you are more likely to lose weight. Probably because then you are not always hungry and snacking on junk food all the time instead of eating a proper meal.

Not only does my mum make me eat breakfast, but she also makes me eat it at the table. Sitting properly too, not slouched all over the place. I’m not even allowed to have my elbows on the table to prop my head up.

She and Dad sit and eat breakfast with me.  Dad tried reading his newspaper once and Mum gave him a very evil eye. No ways – she said. This is family chat time.

She’s always very chirpy in the mornings. Dad tends to answer with just one word. I don’t really think he’s such a morning person.

Must admit though – I do feel a bit more sprightly after eating breakfast – maybe it’s not such a bad idea after all. And remember how good eggs are for you – we’ve talked about that before.

Take time to eat and enjoy your breakfast people!

SiboSibo and eggs

Happy 2017!

Hullo again – I hope that 2017 has been kind to everybody so far and that your holiday season was great!

It’s hard to believe that the year is already 10 days old!  Also that the school holidays have whizzed by and a new term has begun.

Time to move into a higher grade and learn many new and exciting things!

Feh… also time to get up early in the morning again – no more sleeping in.

But I always love going back to school and seeing my old friends.

Or maybe even meeting new friends!

Remember people – be nice to new kids in your class. It’s horrible being the new boy or girl in a place where everybody knows each other. You feel really lonely and left out. Last year we wrote about having a “Friendship Bench” – it really is a good idea.

I started thinking about dates… you know how sometimes you read something about Happy World Wetlands Day on the 2nd of February. Or maybe hear something about celebrating World Radio Day on the 13th of February.

I wondered who on earth decides on these dates?

So I did a bit of research and found out that the United Nations has a website that lists all of the dates that have been declared International/World such and such a day.

There are lots and lots of them. Many of them are rather dreary – to kids anyway. But then again, some are very interesting.

My friend Ginny decided to make a 2017 Sibo calendar and include all the interesting dates.

It turned out to be way too cool to hog to ourselves and we’ve loaded it onto  the website so that we can share it with you!

It’s a .pdf file and it’s actually A3 size because it’s full of lots of stuff!  Don’t worry – it does have the real public holidays on it as well.

You are welcome to download it – if you don’t have a printer at home – put it onto a memory stick and take it to your local Postnet or other printing place. (It will probably cost you around R20 to have it printed.)

The first person to post on my Facebook page what the 15th of May is – wins a Sibo book of their choice!

Have a fabulous 2017 people. Let us all make this year count!

Sibo

It’s a wrap

Well! This year took forever to get finished.

That’s what I think – but my mum says it whooshed passed so fast that her head is reeling and she cannot believe it is finished already. She’s muttering ridiculous things like she wishes she could cancel Christmas. Did you ever?

I’ve heard that the older you get the faster time goes. Seems silly to me – it should go fast when you are young and impatient and then slow down a bit when you have less time left.

I’ve started making some of my Christmas pressies – sneakily – because I don’t want Mum and Dad to see what I’m making them.

Then I started thinking about gift wrapping.

Sjoe! Wrapping paper is rather expensive when you don’t have lots of money. Seems a huge waste to spend money on something that is just going to get ripped off and thrown away – or hopefully – recycled.

Decided I’m going to get creative with wrapping paper too.

If it’s a small gift you can use a pretty picture from a magazine. You better check with your parentals first before you start chopping up a magazine.

You can also use newspaper – the comic sections are very cool. Spice it up with paint, glitter or interesting stuff from the garden.  Use your imagination and get creative. You can also wrap up a very small present in a lot of newspaper (a bit like pass the parcel) and have fun watching the person unwrap it.

One of my friends has a nice system going. She wraps up a present for her sister in a pretty piece of material – it started out as a scarf but then it got too tatty to wear.  Then her sister wraps up my friend’s present the next year in the same material. They have used the same material for birthdays and Christmas for years, but they would always wrap it up differently and add interesting touches. I thought that was an awesome idea.

Of course you could also use old cereal boxes or other containers that would usually get thrown away or recycled. The inside of a toilet roll also makes a brilliant container – you can make the present look like a cracker!

Don’t forget to recycle or reuse all the wrappings once the presents have been opened.

Have a fabulous festive season everybody!

See you in 2017!

Sibo

Habit Making

Was reading something really interesting the other day… about turning something into a habit.

A good thing – like playing an instrument or exercising or learning something new. To do this you have to do it every single day for 66 days – and then it becomes a habit.

Sounds like an incredibly long time to have to do something – but actually it’s really only two months. And it’s not like you have to do it all day every day either.

This is what he suggested.

Make a calendar – a real one on some paper – draw 66 blocks and number each block.

Schedule a time each day to do your stuff – say from 2.30 in the afternoon to 3pm. You can plan for whenever it suits you and for as long or as short as you like.

Each day, when you have worked on your project for the allocated amount of time, you put a nice big X in the appropriate block. After a while, when you see all those X’s you start feeling even more motivated.

I’ve decided that I am going to try this system. I want to learn to code.

Code? I hear you say… What’s that?  Can kids really code?

YES! Kids can code. All over the world, children are learning to code.

All those computer games that get played and the animations that you watch on the computer are done using coding.

Coding is the language that gets used to instruct things to do something on the computer.

A simple example… you want a cartoon of a dog to move forward to the middle of the screen, hop up and down and bark. There’s a sequence of instructions that need to be attached to that particular picture to make it do this. This is called coding.

Years ago it used to be rather hard to do this and you needed to have the right aptitude and mind-set to be able to code. Nowadays things are simpler.

There is a program called “Scratch” (developed by MIT Media Lab) which makes it really easy. It’s called “visual programming” and once you’ve got the hang of how it works – it’s fun galore!

Best of all – it’s FREE. People all over the world are using it, so you can interact with them and get help if you need it.

Here’s the website address – https://scratch.met.edu

Go crack some coding!

Sibo